Sky-Watcher Evostar 72ED Review

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Since a few months, I’m an owner of my first ever telescope – the Sky-Watcher Evostar 72ED. I have been looking for a beginner astrophotography telescope for a few months (as an upgrade from a telephoto lens to a longer focal length), and when the time to choose finally came, I went with the Evostar 72ED. There were two deciding factors to determine when picking up a telescope for me: optical quality and weight. The glass quality is crucial for astrophotography in general, and the weight aspect is significant to me because I wanted to use the telescope on my portable equatorial mount (Fornax LighTrack II), which has a rather small load capacity. So how well the Sky-Watcher Evostar 72ED telescope fits my needs and what astro pictures is it able to produce? Let’s find out!

What comes in the box

Aluminum case

The supplied case is solid. There are keys included, so you can safely secure your astrophotography gear.

SkyWatcher Evostar 72ED with aluminum case

Refractor (OTA)

SkyWatcher Evostar 72ED APO refractor telescope

Dovetail bar, support rings, and finderscope holder

What comes not

There is no finderscope included, no eyepieces, no diagonal, and no field flattener. This telescope is not straight-from-the-box-ready neither for stargazing nor astrophotography. You have to buy some additional accessories on your own (more on that later).

First impressions

It’s tiny and lightweight

Look how small this refractor is. It’s more like a telephoto lens than a telescope. You can take it outside and photograph nature (birds, animals, etc.) with ease.

Skywatcher Evostar 72ED is SMALL. Great for trips, it easily fits into a carry-on bag.

The focuser is ultra-smooth

Using a Bahtinov mask, focusing this telescope is a breeze. Microfocuser works perfectly. I have never had such sharp pictures before using lenses without micro focusers.

SkyWatcher Evostar 72ED 2″ Crayford-type dual-speed focuser

Optics quality seems to be great

The Sky-Watcher company doesn’t reveal a specification for the glass they used for this telescope, so I don’t know if it’s the FPL-53 or not, yet I don’t see any signs of chromatic aberration or other color-correction imperfections on my astrophotography done with this telescope. There is little vignetting, but easily correctable in post-processing (I always recommend taking flat frames anyway).

SkyWatcher Evostar 72ED optics.

Equipping Sky-Watcher Evostar 72ED for astrophotography

As I wrote earlier, this telescope needs some additional accessories to be 100% ready for astrophotography. I paired this refractor with a William Optics 1:1 field flattener (a suggested flattener by my supplier, no focal length change), and an Orion SkyGlow Imaging filter (light pollution killer). This setup gives me a corrected field of view (not 100% flat, but close to it), and allows me to take longer exposures in my light-polluted location.

Astrophotography results with Sky-Watcher Evostar 72ED

All the below pictures were tracked with Fornax Lightrack II on the dedicated wedge. The camera I used was Fuji X-T20, and the telescope, of course, the Evostar 72ED.

Orion Nebula (M42)

California Nebula (NGC 1499) in H-alpha

Horsehead (Barnard 33) and Flame (NGC 2024) Nebulae

My verdict

Sky-Watcher Evostar 72ED is a fantastic APO refractor telescope for astrophotography beginners, and I’m delighted with my purchase! The build quality is excellent, the mobility of this instrument is phenomenal, and the quality to price ratio is unbeatable. I’m going to use this telescope for years to come, and I will probably upgrade only for longer focal length in the future. I consider this refractor as a fantastic beginner astrophotography telescope due to its lightweight, wide field of view (it forgives much of tracking imperfections of an equatorial mount), and because you don’t have to rob a bank to afford it. And it looks cool.

Check out the SkyWatcher Evostar 72ED on Amazon:

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An equatorial mount is a must if you want to use this telescope for deep-sky astrophotography. According to the “500 rule”, at this focal length (420mm), your non-tracked exposures should be no longer than one second. And that length of exposing will not give enough light for your camera sensor to reveal something interesting. But without an equatorial mount you can photograph the Moon – just set short exposure time and stack multiple sub-exposures into one final stack to improve final quality.

In my setup, I don’t have any issues with focusing the ED72. I attach my camera (Fuji X-T20) via adapter (T-2 ring) to a field flattener, and I can freely focus past infinity, no problems with it at all. Generally, with a problem like this (inability to focus because of the short focuser length), you can use extension tubes as a solution. You just mount an additional pipe to your imaging train, and then you are able to focus.

Cheers Pawat Isn’t the internet great when its used to help and advise people by people like yourself. Every one should have one of these especially at the great price. Manchester UK is crxxp with cloud, and on a clear night the sky is obscured by constant contrails spreading out, and neighbours with stadium “security lights”. Rural Spain is where I am heading. Regards, Mike.

Winter this season is really hard for astrophotography, the same situation here in Poland. If you want to beat this light pollution coming from your stadium, try some narrowband astrophotography. This greyscale California nebula picture in the article was captured from my balcony in the city center with a 7nm H-alpha filter.

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About Author

Hey there! I'm Paweł, an astrophotographer from Poland and author of this site. I started my astrophotography adventure in 2017 and never looked back. On Astro Photons I share what I've learned so far. Read More…